The Spotted Eagle Ray. y)"^ 



Body fleshy with pectoral fins shaped like an eagle's wings; head thick, not beaked 

 {non rostrata), furnished with a simple appendage in front; eyes lateral; teeth broad, smooth, 

 polygonal, united, palatine; pectoral fins pointed; anterior margin convex, posterior concave; 

 pelvic fins small, round, whole; dorsal fin single on the root of a tail at times extremely long, 

 flagelliform, armed with a serrate spine, without fin at extremity. 



Following this is a list of species, ten in all, of which narinari is one. 



In 1828, Blainville, in "Faune Fran^aise" under the heading "Poissons 

 Cartilagineux," without assigning any reason whatever therefor, writes the 

 generic name Aetohatis and repeats almost verbatim the generic charac- 

 ters given above. The chief difference is that the teeth are now described 

 as "large, smooth, polygonal, united into two plates, one lingual, the other 

 palatine," but in neither set of characters are the teeth of the lower plate 

 described as bent or angled with the projection forward. The generic 

 term Aetobatus, having been assigned with definite and correctly designating 

 characters twelve years previously, is the correct name for the genus and is 

 accordingly so used throughout this paper. It should be noted here that 

 narinari is not named as a species under this new genus Aetohatis. 



Miiller and Henle (1841), in their epoch-making " Systematische Be- 

 schreibung der Plagiostomen," once and for all gave our ray a definite 

 place in ichthyological literature as Aetohatis narinari. Their description 

 is elsewhere (page 251) given and need not be repeated here, but it should 

 be noted that, among the generic characters, they say of the teeth that 

 the under jaw projects beyond the upper jaw, which has a straight edge, 

 while the under jaw has the teeth bent parallel to the edge of the same; the 

 teeth plates in each jaw form a single row without lateral teeth and do not 

 occupy the whole breadth of the jaw, while for A. narinari it is stated 

 that the lower teeth are in the form of a flat arch (flache Bogen) . They are 

 the first authors to base their description on abundant material, since they 

 had at hand 12 specimens, 6 dry and as many in alcohol, from such widely 

 different regions as the waters of Brazil, the Red Sea, and the East Indies. 

 The great pity is that, not knowing of Blainville's early name, they should 

 have assigned the later generic term which has unfortunately been used down 

 to the present time. 



In working up the synonymy of Aetobatus narinari, it is now necessary 

 to return and to identify certain rays described in the interval between 

 Euphrasen's assigning the specific name and Miiller and Henle's firmly 

 establishing our ray as a distinct form. 



Schneider (Bloch and Schneider 1801) adopted Euphrasen's nomencla- 

 ture. Raja narinari, and although he copied Euphrasen, Forster, and others, 

 he expressly says that he had a hitherto undescribed specimen. Russell's 

 (1803) Raja ocellata, Eel Tenkee of the natives, is plainly an A. narinari, as 

 figure 6, plate in, shows. So likewise is Raiifles's (1830) Myliohatis narinari, 

 which is expressly identified by Bennett with Raja narinari Euphrasen 

 and with Eel Tenkee Russell and is thought (erroneously) to be the same 

 as Shaw's Raja guttata. 



